Gris Gris
For the Season (Birdman)

Gris Gris vaults way ahead of the garage-roots retro-revival pack with their second album, For the Season, a disc as shadowy as its cover snapshot and as meaty as a freshly severed limb. Gris Gris leader Greg Ashley walks with zombies – don't question it, don't worry about how this came to be. Just know that his touch is firm, his footing is sure, and his hunger for pure psychedelic boogie-woogie of the highest order is right on.

Opening with a bold burst of cacophony and creeping forth with an organic certainty that dispenses with any knee-jerk associations with obligatory paisley and jingle-jangle, For the Season peaks and valleys beautifully: The noisome "Ecks Em Eye" shatters into the short, dramatic spaghetti western "Peregrine Downstream," and the driving "Down with Jesus" bleeds into the pretty but deadly "Big Engine Nazi Kid Daydream" before hitting a delectable multihued nugget of lysergic rumination, "Year Zero." And that's just the first "side" – not even counting the chunky freakout of "The Nonstop Tape" (featuring fellow Oaklanders Battleship) and the subterranean squeeze box of "Skin Mass Cat." "Excuse me for the season," Ashley sings as the merry roadhouse piano falls apart and the bluesy guitar solo spins out into a raga on the jumbly closing title track. He needn't apologize – this Season may be one of the best this year. Gris Gris play a CD-release party Nov. 12, 12 Galaxies, SF. (415) 970-9777. (Kimberly Chun)

Window Window

Gravel Ghost (self-released)

Window Window is the side project of local musicians Corbi Wright (vocals-guitar), Colter Jacobson (vocal-guitar), Tomo Yasuda (bass), Donal Mosher (mandolin), and Andria Lesser (banjo). Together they create some of the most beautiful indie folk music since the Mystic Chords of Memory and the Beachwood Sparks. Like those bands, Window Window arrange parts of songs in interesting ways. In "Don't You Take It," samples of silverware clinking together or ambient laughter are paired with the slow, romantic sound of the mandolin. Wright's voice is the perfect match for the string instruments. Husky and clear, it toughens the edges of the band's soft instruments and adds a stark quality that makes the vocals hard to ignore. Not all the songs are vocal-heavy, though; the instrumental "Animal Orchestra" is played at an upbeat tempo that changes the mood from sleepy Sunday afternoon to nighttime at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. But not all tracks blend together – or sound related. In "Kagami," the band harmonically chants in a language that's unidentifiable and striking when set against plucked instruments. What makes this group unique are the directions they take: from banjo-happy to bluesy-folk, what they dish is limitless. (Stephanie Laemoa)

Mail stuff for review to Sarah Han, Bay Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107.